First Question on Campus

I don't know why I just remembered an incident. I really laughed a lot when it jumped to my mind.
On my first days on Campus in Purdue, I was a little lost.
You know, it is just you are not familiar with language, system, people..etc
I was looking for something and I was hesitated to ask someone to guide me. So I kept thinking to myself about I should formalize my question..let me say excuse me at the beginning.......no no let it be Hello...no no let's say good morning".
I can't remember how much time these thoughts took.
but anyway, after the formalization step is done, the following step is to pick the person who I should ask. Well, let me see..there are many ppl going around, some others are just sitting. It's an easy task. isn't it?
I am not sure how much time this took me also :) . but I believe it was much harder than the first step.
Finally I made my choice, my saver is few steps far from me...
I started firing my well formatted sentence "Excuse me............"
I kept talking and asking, but didn't get any response....so I rephrased my questions and I was trying to make my tome more loud..

Finally, I get a response from the guy.. he said in a discrete tone " I..a.m D.E.A.F"